My narcissist boyfriend recorded me during ex without consent until I hacked his cloud and found videos of 47 other women. My name is Amber and I’m 28 years old. I work as a graphic designer in Portland. And until three weeks ago, I thought I knew exactly who I was dating.

I thought Marcus was the one. The guy who brought me coffee in bed, who remembered my favorite Thai restaurant, who looked at me like I was the only person in the room, I was wrong about everything. It started on a Tuesday morning. Marcus had left for a business trip to Seattle and I was alone in his apartment. We had been together for 18 months and I had a key. He’d given it to me 6 months in. this whole romantic gesture with a little speech about trust and building a future together. I remember thinking I was the luckiest woman alive that morning. I was looking for my laptop charger. I could have sworn I left it in his office. This small room he used for his photography business. Marcus was a commercial photographer which explained all the camera equipment, the lighting rigs, the computer setup that looked like it belonged at NASA. I opened his desk drawer. No charger, just batteries, memory cards, the usual stuff. But then I saw it. A small camera, not one of his professional ones. This was tiny, barely bigger than a thumb drive with a lens you could miss if you weren’t looking for it. My stomach did this weird flip.

I picked it up, turned it over in my hands. Why would you need a camera this small? Where would you even use something like this? And then my brain caught up with my hands and I felt cold

all over. I put the camera down, stepped back from the desk, told myself I was being ridiculous. Marcus was a photographer. He had all kinds of equipment. This was probably for some client project, something completely innocent, but my hands were still shaking. I looked around his office.

Really looked at the bookshelf behind his desk, at the small plant on the window sill, at the charging dock on the corner of his desk that always had his phone and iPad. Except the charging dock looked wrong. The angle was weird. The USB ports faced outward instead of back toward the wall. I walked over, picked it up, turned it around. There was a lens, tiny, almost invisible, but definitely there. My heart started racing, like physically pounding in my chest so hard I thought I might pass out. I sat down in his office chair. The room suddenly felt smaller, like the walls were moving in. I turned on his computer. Marcus wasn’t great with passwords. He used the same one for everything, the name of his childhood dog with some numbers. He told me this once when we were sharing those cute relationship stories about our past.

Diesel 2019. The computer unlocked. I told myself I was being paranoid, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, that I was being one of those crazy girlfriends who snoops through their boyfriend’s stuff. But my hands were shaking and I couldn’t stop them. His desktop was organized, too.

Organized folders labeled by year, by client name, by project, everything in its place. I clicked through a few normal stuff, corporate head shot, product photography, a wedding from last summer. Then I saw it, a folder just called personal hidden inside another folder called archives 2019 2023. I hovered the mouse over it. My hand was shaking so badly the cursor kept missing. Click, miss. Click, miss.

Finally, I clicked it. The folder opened and my world ended. Videos, dozens of them. Hundreds maybe. All thumbnails showing bedrooms, dim lighting, intimate moments. I recognized my own face in some of them. Me in Marcus’ bed. Me in positions I never wanted anyone else to see. Me in moments I thought were private, sacred, just between us. I couldn’t breathe. Like someone had punched me in the chest and forgot to let me get air back. I clicked on one of my videos just to be sure, just to confirm what I already knew. There I was 6 months ago. I remembered that night.

I’d worn the blue lingerie he loved.

We’d had wine. I’d felt beautiful and wanted and safe. And the whole time, somewhere in that room, a camera had been watching, recording, keeping. The video showed everything, every angle.

The camera must have been on his dresser, hidden in something. It captured the whole room. The whole night, I watched 30 seconds before I had to stop. Seeing myself like that, knowing I hadn’t known, knowing I’d thought this was just between us. It felt like being violated all over again.

I slammed the laptop shut, stood up, sat back down. My legs wouldn’t work right.

How long had this been going on? I opened the laptop again, forced myself to look. The files were dated. I clicked through, my horror growing with each folder. Some were labeled with dates, some with initials Kim, Chicago, March 2022, J12. Birthday August 2023 A.S.

First time, February 2024. That last one was me. Amber Sterling, first time. He’d labeled me like a catalog item, like a book in a library. Like I was inventory.

I spent the next hour going through everything. I had to know. Had to see how deep this went. Each video was about 20 to 40 minutes long. Each one showed a different woman, different bedrooms, sometimes his place, sometimes what looked like hotels, sometimes apartments I didn’t recognize. I counted them once, twice, three times because I couldn’t believe the number 47 women. 47 and I was just number 47. Some of the women I recognized from his social media, friends of friends, women he’d photographed for his business. That girl Melissa who worked at the coffee shop he liked. I’d met her once. She’d seemed sweet, shy, way too young for him. She couldn’t have been more than 20. I felt sick, actually sick. I ran to his bathroom and threw up. Stayed there on the cold tile floor for 20 minutes, forehead pressed against the toilet seat, trying to understand what I had just discovered. When I came back, I sat on his bed. Our bed. The bed where he’d filmed me without asking. Without telling me, without giving me the choice to say no. I picked up a pillow. His pillow. It smelled like his cologne.

That expensive stuff he wore. I’d love that smell. Now it made me want to throw up again. I looked around the bedroom with new eyes. Where were the cameras?

How many were there? I spotted one almost immediately now that I knew what to look for. The alarm clock on his nightstand. It was angled weird, facing the bed instead of toward whoever was sleeping. I picked it up. Sure enough, tiny lens hidden in the display. How had I never noticed? I should have called the police right then. That’s what everyone says you should do, right? But I couldn’t move. My brain was stuck in this loop of memories, replaying every time we’d been together, wondering where the cameras were, how many there were, who else had seen these videos? Had he shared them? Were they online somewhere?

Was I on some website right now? My face and body available to anyone with an internet connection? That thought made me stand up. I started searching his room. Under the bed, in the closet, behind picture frames, I found three more cameras. Tiny things disguised as phone chargers, USB drives, even a smoke detector that looked completely normal, but had a lens hidden in the little red light. One was in the bathroom, in his bathroom. Pointing at the shower, I thought about all the times I’d showered here. Getting ready for dates, getting ready for bed, standing there naked and wet and vulnerable, thinking I was alone. I wasn’t alone. He’d been watching recording. Who does this? Who is this person? I thought I knew Marcus.

We’d talked about moving in together.

About marriage, kids growing old. He’d met my parents. I’d met his mom. We’d planned a trip to Italy for next spring.

He’d shown me the hotels he wanted to book, made reservations at restaurants, talked about proposing on the Amalfi Coast. All of it was a lie. All of it was just him playing a role while he collected his videos like some kind of predator. I needed proof, evidence, something I could take to the police that wouldn’t just be his word against mine. Because I knew guys like Marcus, charming, successful, well-liked. He’d find a way to spin this to make it seem like I was the crazy one, the jealous girlfriend who couldn’t handle his past.

So, I did something I’m not proud of. Or maybe I am proud of it. I don’t know anymore. I accessed his cloud storage.

Marcus kept everything backed up online.

He’d mentioned it once, complaining about the cost of unlimited storage, joking about how he had his whole life in the cloud. He used the same password for everything. Diesel 20129. I typed it in, held my breath. The cloud opened up like a treasure chest full of evidence.

Not just the videos. Oh no, this was worse. This was organized. This was systematic. He had spreadsheets. Actual spreadsheets. Multiple tabs. One for each year going back to 2019. I opened the 2024 tab. Found my name. Amber S.

February 14th, 2024. Valentine’s date.

Apartment. Trusting. Easy to manipulate.

Good long-term potential. Four, five stars. He’d rated me like I was a restaurant, like I was a product on Amazon. I scrolled through the other names on the list. Jessica R. January 2022. New Year’s party. Hotel. Nervous at first, relaxed after wine. Very loud.

Five stars. Brittney K. March 2023. Yoga instructor. Her place. Athletic, flexible, good footage from multiple angles. Five. Five stars. Melissa T.

August 2024. Coffee shop girl.

Apartment. Young. Inexperienced. Felt guilty after. Three. Five stars. Each woman had notes. Detailed notes about their personalities, their bodies, their performance, about how easily they trusted him, about which camera angles worked best. I felt like I was going to be sick again. But there was more. So much more. Messages. Screenshots of conversations where he’d bragged to someone about his videos. Someone named Derek, also a photographer apparently, who was running the same scheme in Austin. They traded tips, talked about which cameras worked best, which angles captured the most, how to hide them so the women never noticed. The smoke detector works great, Marcus had written. Been using it for 2 years. No one ever suspects. Nice, Dererick replied. I’ve been using the phone charger once. Girls always plug their phones in right on the nightstand.

Perfect angle. They compared numbers.

Dererick claimed he had 62 videos.

Marcus was proud of his 47. Called it his collection. Said he was going for 50 by the end of the year. I was part of someone’s goal. Someone’s quota. There were photos, too. Not just from the videos, but screenshots. He’d taken the most explicit moments and saved them separately. Organized them by woman, by act, by whatever sick category system he’d invented. Blonde, brunette, redhead, athletic, curvy, shy, loud. We were categories, labels, things to be sorted and filed. I downloaded everything. All of it. 37 gigabytes of evidence. I had an external hard drive in my bag, the one I used for work files. I plugged it in and let it run.

While the files transferred, I went back through the list of women. 47 names.

Some were full names with phone numbers attached. Some were just first names and initials, but I could work with this. I could find them. The question was, what would I do then? I could go to the police, show them everything, let the system handle it. But I’d watched enough true crime documentaries to know how that goes. He’d get a lawyer, a good one. They’d argue about consent, about whether the videos were actually illegal in Oregon, about whether he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his own home. They’d put us, the victims, on trial instead of him. And even if he got convicted, what would he get? A few years probation? His name on a registry that nobody actually checks. No, that wasn’t enough. Not for 47 women. Not for the violation of our trust, our bodies, our privacy. I needed a different plan.

The download bar was at 73%. I got up, walked around his apartment, really looked at it for the first time with clear eyes. The coffee maker, where he’d made me coffee every morning, probably recorded me standing there in my pajamas, half asleep, trusting him completely. The couch where we’d watched movies, probably recorded me cuddling against him, laughing at jokes, being intimate in small ways I thought were just between us. The kitchen table where we’d had breakfast, where he’d told me he loved me for the first time, where I believed him everything was a lie. Every moment was surveillance. The download finished. I closed everything. made sure there was no trace I’d been in his system. I put the cameras back exactly where I found them. The smoke detector, the alarm clock, the charging dock, the USB drive, all of them. I took photos of where they were positioned. Evidence of evidence. Then I locked up his apartment and went home to my own place. My apartment felt different, smaller. I checked every corner, every surface, looking for cameras, for lenses, for signs that maybe Marcus had been in here, too. Planting his equipment, expanding his collection, I didn’t find anything, but I still felt watched. For 3 days, I couldn’t sleep. I’d close my eyes and see those thumbnails. All those women, all those private moments stolen and cataloged and kept. I’d lie in bed staring at my ceiling, replaying our entire relationship, looking for signs I’d missed, red flags I’d ignored. Were there signs, or was he just that good at hiding? I remembered early on, maybe a month into dating, he’d taken photos of me. Not intimate ones, just regular photos. At the park, at dinner, walking down the street, he said he wanted to remember everything about us. I’d thought it was romantic. Now, I wondered if he was practicing, testing how comfortable I was being photographed, building up my trust so that later, when cameras were in his bedroom, I wouldn’t think twice. I remembered him asking about my family, my friends, my co-workers, normal getting to know you questions. But then he’d asked about social media, how much I posted, whether I was private or public, whether I shared location tags. At the time, I thought he was just curious. Now I realized he was assessing risk, making sure I wasn’t the type to blast him online if things went wrong. Every sweet moment we’d had was tainted now. Every gift was manipulation. Every kiss was strategy. Marcus texted me from Seattle.